Cloud computing - episodes ...

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

MS BPOS cloud service hit with data breach
- http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9202078/Microsoft_BPOS_cloud_service_hit_with_data_breach
December 22, 2010 - "Company data belonging to customers of Microsoft's hosted business suite BPOS has been accessed and downloaded by other users of the software. The issue affected the Offline Address Book of customers of the Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) Standard suite... "We recently became aware that, due to a configuration issue, Offline Address Book information for Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) Standard customers could be inadvertently downloaded by other customers of the service, in a very specific circumstance," said Clint Patterson, director of BPOS Communications at Microsoft. The data breach occurred in Microsoft data centers in North America, Europe and Asia. The issue was resolved within two hours of being discovered, Microsoft said in a statement. However, during this time "a very small number" of illegitimate downloads occurred. "We are working with those few customers to remove the files," Patterson said. This Offline Address Book contains an organization's business contact information for employees. It is stored on a server hosted by Microsoft as part of Exchange Online but can be downloaded for offline access. It does not contain Outlook personal contacts, e-mail, documents or other types of information, Microsoft stressed... BPOS includes Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Communications Online and Office Live Meeting. In October, Microsoft outlined the next version of BPOS, called Office 365, intended to be a full-fledged option to Google Apps and other cloud-based suites. Office 365 combines the collaboration and communication elements of BPOS with Office Web Apps and, alternatively, even with Office 2010."

:sad::fear:

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

Top 10 Cloud stories Of 2010
- http://www.informationweek.com/news/galleries/software/soa_webservices/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228800741&cid=iwk-slide-last-featured
12/24/2010 - "Everybody's head was in the cloud, or so it seemed in 2010. Both well established and startup vendors developed solutions and strategies designed to extend their reach or provide entry into this booming market. After all, IDC estimated the cloud market will be worth $55 billion by 2014; Gartner predicted the cloud world could be valued at $148 billion at that time*..."

* http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1389313

Windows 8 will be cloud-based ...
- http://windows8beta.com/2010/03/windows-8-will-be-a-cloud-based-os
___

Criminals host trojans on Cloud Storage Service Rapidshare
- http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Criminals-Host-Trojans-on-Cloud-Storage-Service-Rapidshare-339725/
2010-12-30 - "Spammers are using cloud-based storage services to store malware, allowing them to circumvent e-mail spam filters, according to security experts at Kaspersky Lab and MX Lab. Kaspersky Lab detected the click-fraud Trojan, a variant of the Trojan-Dropper.Wind32.Drooptroop family, which has been in circulation since the beginning of December, said Vicente Diaz, a Kaspersky Lab expert. There are over 7,000 variants of this particular family, according to Kaspersky. As with other types of malware that took advantage of the holiday season, the executable file for this Trojan was named gift.exe, Diaz said. The security firm detected more than 1,000 infections using this technique to distribute this variant, according to Diaz. The Trojan is stored on Rapidshare, a cloud-based file-sharing and storage service. The spam messages that users receive in their Inbox have no text, just a single link pointing to a valid Rapidshare URL. These messages get past spam filters because there are no malicious files attached, the domain name is not considered a “bad” one, and executables hosted on Rapidshare aren’t automatically classified as a threat, said Diaz. There was also a recent fake antivirus spam campaign that included a Rapidshare link pointing to surprise.exe, according to security firm MX Lab. The executable file downloads and installs the fake AV Security Shield on the user’s computer, which runs after the computer is rebooted. Once downloaded, there’s no guarantee that authentic antivirus products will detect these Trojans. According to MX Lab, only 16 of the 43 major antivirus products detected surprise.exe as a Trojan or as fake AV..."

- http://www.securelist.com/en/blog/11103/Malware_in_the_cloud

- http://blog.mxlab.eu/2010/12/14/malware-distrubution-on-rapidshare-surprise-exe/

The year of the cloud ...
- http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/what-you-need-know-about-the-year-the-cloud-888
December 30, 2010

:fear:

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

Has Big Brother gone Global?
- http://isc.sans.edu/diary.html?storyid=10261
Last Updated: 2011-01-12 13:45:46 UTC - "... the Tunsinian Government may be harvesting or hacking information from Gmail accounts and or Facebook accounts. This goes to show the moment it is in the “cloud” it is no longer private. If you want something private, encrypt it. Most of us at the ISC follow the “front page” rule. If you write it, treat it like the information is on the front page of your national newspaper.
http://www.fastcompany.com/1715575/tunisian-government-hacking-facebook-gmail-anonymous
Going back to last year, the US National Security Agency considers their network untrustworthy.
http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=10333 ..."

- http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2011-01-07/

:fear::fear:

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

Trojan built to disable cloud AV...
- http://www.itnews.com.au/News/245426,trojan-built-to-disable-cloud-antivirus.aspx
Jan 20, 2011 - "Microsoft has discovered a Trojan that aims to sever the connection between a device and the cloud antivirus (AV) service that is meant to protect it. The Bohu Trojan, which targets Windows machines, contains three main functions: evade detection, install a filter that blocks traffic between the device and service provider, and prevent the local installation from uploading data to the server. The attack appears to aim to knock out the additional layer of security that many antivirus companies have added to bolster defences and reduce the processing burden of ever-expanding signature databases. "Cloud-based virus detection generally works by client sending important threat data to the server for backend analysis, and subsequently acquiring further detection and removal instruction," Jingli Li and Zhitao Zhou of Microsoft Malware Protection Center wrote on the company's blog..."
* http://blogs.technet.com/b/mmpc/archive/2011/01/19/bohu-takes-aim-at-the-cloud.aspx

- http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/20/chinese_cloud_busting_trojan/
20 January 2011

:fear:

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

Google wipes out Gmail settings and msgs...
- http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2029271/google-wipes-gmail-accounts-messages
Feb 28 2011 - "COMPLAINTS ARE FLOODING IN to Google after some Gmail users woke up to find that their inboxes had been wiped clean of messages. A number of Gmail forum posters report that their messages, labels and settings have all been set back to default. The consensus is that it is a problem on Google's end, with many people deeply concerned because many of them use Gmail as their main email account... Google confirmed that there is a problem on the Google Apps dashboard. Engineers are busy working on the issue, with the affected accounts disabled... Already a major glitch for Google's cloud technology, this will be a horrendous public relations disaster if there is no backup system in place. The company is trying to sort this out quickly."

:blink:

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

Google: "software update" triggered loss...
- http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2029569/google-update-triggered-gmail-loss
Mar 01 2011 - "... Google has confirmed that a storage software update was responsible for causing some Gmail users to lose access to their e-mail. Some Gmail users complained of losing e-mails, contacts, and folders. Google claimed that 0.29 per cent of the user base was affected by the problem but has since revised that figure to less than 0.02 per cent, or about 40,000 of the service's 200 million accounts. Ben Treynor, Google VP of engineering and site reliability czar, said sorry for the mess and said he expects to have the lost data restored soon. He said that the data was not completely lost and Google had restored most of it already... Users might be wondering how safe all this cloud computing lark really is if, as Google promises, all the data was backed up in different locations with the keys owned by people who have never met each other. Treynor said this is because in some rare instances software bugs can affect several copies of the data..."

:confused:

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

Some Customer Data Permanently Destroyed in Amazon Cloud Crash
- https://www.sans.org/newsletters/newsbites/newsbites.php?vol=13&issue=34#sID200
April 29, 2011 - "... You can put your data in the cloud - it's getting it back that's the hard part..."

... Lessons to other cloud-based businesses.
- http://www.informationweek.com/news/cloud-computing/infrastructure/229402385?printer_friendly=this-page
April 28, 2011 - "... A note posted to the Amazon Services Health Dashboard April 24 said the three-day service outage will be fully explained in "a detailed post mortem." On April 27, AWS CTO Werner Vogels posted to his blog a 2010 letter that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos wrote to shareholders, extolling AWS' technology innovation and commitment to customers..."
___

Amazon Web Services » Service Health Dashboard
Current Status: http://status.aws.amazon.com/
(Scroll down for 'Status History')
___

- https://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9216303/Amazon_cloud_outage_was_triggered_by_configuration_error
April 29, 2011 - "... Amazon posted updates, short and bulletin-like, throughout the outage, but what it offered in its postmortem* is entirely different. This nearly 5,700-word document includes a detailed look at what happened, an apology, a credit to affected customers, as well a commitment to improve its customer communications. Amazon didn't say explicitly whether it was human error that touched off the event, but hints at that possibility when it wrote that "we will audit our change process and increase the automation to prevent this mistake from happening in the future." The initial mistake, followed by the subsequent increase in network load, exposed a cascading series of issues, including a "re-mirroring storm" with systems continuously searching for a storage space..."
* http://aws.amazon.com/message/65648/

:sad: :fear:

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

VMware - Cloud Foundry service outages
- http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/05/02/2231244/VMware-Causes-Second-Outage-While-Recovering-From-First
May 02,2011 - "VMware's new Cloud Foundry service was online for just two weeks when it suffered its first outage, caused by a power failure. Things got really interesting the next day, when a VMware employee accidentally caused a second, more serious outage while a VMware team was writing up a plan of action to recover from future power loss incidents. An inadvertent press of a key on a keyboard led to 'a full outage of the network infrastructure [that] took out all load balancers, routers, and firewalls... and resulted in a complete external loss of connectivity to Cloud Foundry.' Clearly, human error is still a major factor in cloud networks."
- http://support.cloudfoundry.com/entries/20067876-analysis-of-april-25-and-26-2011-downtime

- http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/vulnerabilities/229402618?printer_friendly=this-page
May 02, 2011 - "... 69% of cloud providers think that cloud users are most responsible for security, and only 16% think it's a shared responsibility. But according to a Ponemon study conducted last year, 33% of users see cloud security as a shared responsibility, and 32% think that the provider alone is most responsible. Only 35% of cloud users, meanwhile, think that users should be most responsible for cloud security... Legally speaking, however, cloud providers really aren't responsible for data security, as long as they make some effort, according to their end user license agreements (EULAs)..."

:fear::sad:

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

Cloud over cloud computing...
- http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2011/05/09/sony-hack-casts-cloud-over-cloud-computing/
May 9, 2011 - "It isn’t just Sony that has suffered from the hacker breach of their network, the whole cloud computing movement has taken a bit of a knock, or perhaps has had a wake-up call.
We reported the findings of a survey by the Ponemom Institute which, surprisingly, found that cloud service providers do not see security as their main concern. Perhaps Sony’s experience will make them think again. International news agency Reuters reckons it might*... One of the issues with cloud is liability. If there is a breach and data is lost, whose liability is it? At the moment the industry is trying to establish guidelines and working practices; but until that issue is resolved — if it ever is — expect pubic cloud adoption to be slow and cautious."
* http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/06/us-sony-cloud-idUSTRE7455C020110506
"Shares of companies that specialize in cloud computing have been some of top-performing stocks over the past year. But the attack on Sony, as well as a massive outage at Amazon.com Inc’s cloud computing center, have caused some businesses to put the brakes on plans to move their operations into the cloud. “Nobody is secure. Sony is just the tip of this thing,” said Eric Johnson, a professor at Dartmouth University who advises large corporations on computer technology strategies. Since news of the Sony breach broke on April 26, shares of companies involved in cloud computing have underperformed the broader market. Salesforce.com Inc, a maker of web-delivered software, has dropped 3 percent. VMware Inc, which sells software for building clouds, has declined 2 percent. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index has climbed 3.3 percent... the first round of contracts for early adopters are coming to an end after three-year deals and companies are seeking better performance and terms for disasters."

:fear: :secret:

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

Microsoft BPOS cloud outage...
- http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/13/microsoft_bpos_apology/
13 May 2011 - "... Customers on BPOS in the US and worldwide were kicked off their hosted Exchange email systems, being unable to read, write, or access their messages. All users were affected – from down in the cubicle farm all the way up to the CEO's corner office. The outages started Tuesday and came after weeks of the service slowly degrading. The cause of the problem, Thomson said*, was "malformed email traffic" in BPOS's Exchange Servers... "obscure cases" and "related issues"..."
* http://blogs.technet.com/b/msonline/archive/2011/05/13/update-on-bpos-standard-email-issues.aspx

:fear:

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

Amazon cloud used by hacks...
- http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-13/sony-network-said-to-have-been-invaded-by-hackers-using-amazon-com-server.html
2011-05-13 - "Amazon’s Web Services cloud-computing unit was used by hackers in last month’s attack against Sony's online entertainment systems, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Hackers using an alias signed up to rent a server through Amazon’s EC2 service and launched the attack from there, said the person, who requested anonymity because the information is confidential. The account has been shut down, the person said. The development sheds light on how hackers used the so- called cloud to carry out the second-biggest online theft of personal information to date... The hackers didn’t break into the Amazon servers, the person said. Rather, they signed up for the service just as a legitimate company would, using fake information... The Federal Bureau of Investigation will likely subpoena Amazon as part of its investigation process..."

:sad::fear::mad:

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

Eucalyptus cloud - critical vuln...
- http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Critical-vulnerability-in-open-source-Eucalyptus-clouds-1252593.html
30 May 2011 - "... critical vulnerability in Eucalyptus, an open source implementation of the Amazon EC2 cloud APIs. An attacker can, with access to the network traffic, intercept Eucalyptus SOAP commands and either modify them or issue their own arbitrary commands. To achieve this, the attacker needs only to copy the signature from one of the XML packets sent by Eucalyptus to the user. As Eucalyptus did not properly validate SOAP requests, the attacker could use the copy in their own commands sent to the SOAP interface and have them executed as the authenticated user. All versions up to and including 2.0.2 are vulnerable; a fixed version, 2.0.3*, is available to download. Ubuntu's Eucalyptus-based Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) is also vulnerable; updates for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, 10.10 and 11.04 are already available in Canonical's repositories. Eucalyptus does note** that the changes made to close the holes may lead to some existing tools failing to work as the system will interpret them as a replay attack if they issue commands too rapidly."
* http://open.eucalyptus.com/downloads

** http://open.eucalyptus.com/news/2011-05-25-eucalyptus-203

:fear::fear:

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

Attackers use Amazon Cloud to host malware
- http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/attackers-using-amazon-cloud-host-malware-060611
June 6, 2011 - "Attackers are beginning to host their malicious domains and drive-by download sites, and most recently researchers have discovered a number of domains on Amazon's cloud platform that are being used to install malware as part of a spam and phishing campaign designed to steal banking credentials and other sensitive data... attack sites are installing a variety of malicious files on victims' machines, including a component that acts as a rootkit and attempts to disable installed anti-malware applications. Other components that are downloaded during the attack include one that tries to steal login information from a list of nine banks in Brazil and two other international banks, another that steals digital certificates from eTokens stored on the machine and one that collects unique data about the PC itself, which is used by some banks as part of an authentication routine. Researchers say that the attacks likely originated in Brazil and are targeting users in Brazil, specifically. The domains that are being used in this attack have now been removed by Amazon, according to Kaspersky Lab researcher Dmitry Bestuzhev, who discovered the malicious domains*... The advent of commodity cloud computing platforms gives attackers one more venue in which to host their attack domains, but the attacks themselves are quite similar to what users have been seeing for years."
* http://www.securelist.com/en/blog/208188099/Financial_data_stealing_Malware_now_on_Amazon_Web_Services_Cloud
___

- http://www.information-management.com/news/cloud_security_sony_amazon_RSA-10020489-1.html?zkPrintable=true
June 6, 2011

- https://www.computerworld.com/s/article/356811/Cloud_Storage_Gets_the_Ax
June 6, 2011

:mad::fear::mad:

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

Amazon cloud users reveal confidential data...
- http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Many-Amazon-cloud-users-reveal-confidential-data-1263704.html
20 June 2011 - "Sharing Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) to run on Amazon's Web Services (AWS) can open the door to attackers when users do not follow appropriate safety advice. The AMIs may contain private cryptographic keys, certificates and passwords, as researchers at the Darmstadt Research Center's CASED (Center for Advanced Security Research Darmstadt) found. In a report** [German language], they say that they examined 1100 public AMIs for cloud services and found that 30 per cent were vulnerable to manipulation that could allow attackers to partially or completely take over virtual web service infrastructure or other resources... Amazon Web Services have also been informed which customers are affected."
* http://aws.amazon.com/amis
** http://www.sit.fraunhofer.de/presse/20110620-sicherheitsbedrohung-durch-cloud-nutzung.jsp

- http://www.h-online.com/security/features/Storing-passwords-in-uncrackable-form-1255576.html
20 June 2011 - "... As many people use the same password in multiple places, criminals can use the passwords to obtain unauthorised access to further services... Cloud, CUDA and multi-core computer technologies are both a blessing and a curse: they can greatly accelerate the processing of data and make even complex simulations available to end users. Unfortunately, crackers use the same high-speed computing power to reconstruct plain-text data from an encrypted password, and then they use the password to log into a system as administrators. In this context, password crackers can take advantage of the fact that the harvested hashes were probably created using the MD5 algorithm, which is optimised for fast processing..."

:fear::fear:

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

'We can hand over Office 365 data without your permission'...
- http://www.zdnet.com/blog/igeneration/microsoft-we-can-hand-over-office-365-data-without-your-permission/11041
June 23, 2011 - "... Hidden within a whitepaper*, detailing the security features in the upcoming Office 365 suite, it reveals links to the Trust Center; a treasure trove of data protection policies and legalities of how Microsoft will handle your data in its cloud datacenters. Next week, Microsoft will announce the launch of Office 365 in both New York and London... In light of the Patriot Act furore, customers of cloud services are naturally becoming more aware of the limitations to cloud security and privacy; with legalities and powerful acts of law taking precedent. In short, Microsoft states:
“In a limited number of circumstances, Microsoft may need to disclose data without your prior consent, including as needed to satisfy legal requirements, or to protect the rights or property of Microsoft or others (including the enforcement of agreements or policies governing the use of the service).”
This covers all users and data of Microsoft Online Services, including the current offering of BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite), currently in migration to Office 365. Current Live@edu users are also affected by this — mostly schools and colleges — which are also upgrading to Office 365... a personal and heartfelt congratulations to Microsoft — in full sincerity — for being as open, honest and transparent in their documentation..."
(More detail at the URL above.)
* http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26552
Security in Office 365 Whitepaper.docx 5.0 MB

Data Use Limits
- http://www.microsoft.com/online/legal/v2/?docid=23
"... FAQ: ... Question: Can Microsoft Online Services use or disclose my data without my permission? In a limited number of circumstances, Microsoft may need to disclose data without your prior consent..."

:sad: :blink:

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

When consumers go to the Cloud...
- http://www.darkreading.com/taxonomy/index/printarticle/id/231000837
June 30, 2011 - "For four hours last week, a flawed authentication update allowed anyone the ability to access the data of any user of the cloud storage service Dropbox. The error could have caused a massive privacy breach. As it turned out, the company was notified and fixed the error before widespread knowledge allowed the vulnerability to be exploited by malicious actors. "According to our records, there were fewer than a hundred affected users, and neither account settings nor files were modified in any of these accounts," the company wrote in a blog post last Friday*... Dropbox encrypts data on the servers, but not to individual accounts, notes Sorin Mustaca, a product manager with security firm Avira. Anyone with admin access to the server can read all of its data. In addition, data on the servers of external services have lesser legal protections, Mustaca says. "I always advise our users to be very, very careful what they put online because if they put anything online, then the data does not belong to them anymore - it belongs to the cloud," Mustaca says. "This is the most important lesson that needs to be learned by anybody. If you put it online, you lose control of the data"... Dropbox is not the only consumer cloud service that has been the focus of security concerns. Evernote, Apple's MobileMe, iCloud, and cloud offerings from Google and Amazon all have generated security concerns in recent months. Barring employees from using cloud services usually does not work, Chaudhry says. Companies attempted to bar the use of social networks, but employees found ways of using the services anyway..."
* http://blog.dropbox.com/?p=821

:fear::fear:

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

Lawyers in the Cloud ...
- http://blogs.csoonline.com/1616/lawyers_in_the_cloud_and_their_data
2011-07-27 - "Even state bar associations, the entities that regulate lawyers, are struggling with the cloud. Specifically, the “big” question is “if a lawyer stores attorney-client privileged information in the cloud, will that result in a waiver of that privilege.” Remarkably, only a very few bar associations have directly addressed this issue. Arizona, New Jersey, and New York bar associations have all issued guidances for lawyers regarding cloud storage of sensitive attorney-client information. In general, they find the practice is permissible if reasonable care is used to vet and monitor the cloud provider’s security measures. For example, the New York bar stated, “[A] lawyer may use an online ‘cloud’ computer data backup system to store client files provided that the lawyer takes reasonable care to ensure that the system is secure and that client confidentiality will be maintained.” New York State Ethics Op. 842. The question, of course, is “what constitutes reasonable care?” For example, if a cloud provider has a good record of security and has a great SAS 70 Type II audit report, but specifically disclaims any liability for security breaches and offers only minimal confidentiality protection, is this good enough to satisfy the “reasonable care” requirement? No one knows. What is clear is that, just like all other businesses, lawyers must be cautious in this area and thoroughly vet their cloud providers."

:spider::fear:

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

SpyEye in the Amazon cloud ...
- http://www.securelist.com/en/blog/208193064/Amazon_S3_exploiting_through_SpyEye
July 28, 2011 - "... According to our research, cybercriminals have been running SpyEye activities and from Amazon for the past couple of weeks... One hurdle for these cybercriminals to abusing Amazon S3 is the creation of an Amazon Web Services (AWS) account. These accounts require a legitimate identity and method of payment, so it is evident that criminals are using stolen data to overcome this challenge. Data shows that Amazon cloud services were abused heavily this month to spread malware. The following graph shows the domains used for this campaign from the second half of July 2011...
> http://www.securelist.com/en/images/pictures/klblog/208193067.png
... there are isolated cases, but the tendency to exploit services like cloud storage is in full expansion. This trend clearly represents a critical point for online storage services and requires special treatment. We have reported these domains to the appropriate security teams..."
___

>> http://google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=AS:16509
___

- http://blog.trendmicro.com/cybercriminals-using-amazon-web-services-aws-to-host-malware/
Aug 1, 2011 - "... collected approximately 22Mb of malware for analysis & detection that was hosted on AWS... advice is to avoid clicking on any suspicious link either in an unsolicited e-mail, or an apparently benign link embedded in a webpage hosted on AWS (e.g. zx1uporn.s3.amazon .com, et al.) until this problem is resolved. We have recently seen about 30-50 various subdomains and specific URLs created on AWS which appear to harbor malicious content. We have reported this to Amazon Security..."
___

SpyEye Tracker
- https://spyeyetracker.abuse.ch/
"... quick statistics about the SpyEye Trojan:
SpyEye C&C servers tracked: 381
SpyEye C&C servers online: 184
SpyEye C&C server with files online: 38
• Average SpyEye binary Antivirus detection: 26.14% ..."

ZeuS Tracker
- https://zeustracker.abuse.ch/
"... quick statistics about the ZeuS crimeware:
ZeuS C&C servers tracked: 659
ZeuS C&C servers online: 223
ZeuS C&C servers with files online: 53
ZeuS FakeURLs tracked: 19
ZeuS FakeURLs online: 6
• Average ZeuS binary Antivirus detection rate: 38.67% ..."

(... as of 2011.08.04)

:mad:

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

MS CRM Online, Office365 outage ...
- http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/outage-hits-microsoft-crm-online-office-365-customers/10359?tag=nl.e539
August 17, 2011 - "Microsoft CRM Online and Office 365 users were hit with outages to their cloud services on August 17. Microsoft has yet to respond as to what’s going on. A number of customers using the Microsoft-hosted Dynamics CRM Online and its Office 365 cloud service were reporting performance problems aon August 17... On the CRM Online front, “performance is slow for most users, to the point that some can’t use CRM at all,” one Microsoft CRM user said. His company is based in the U.S., he said, but international users of the system were affected, as well..."

- http://rcpmag.com/articles/2011/08/17/microsoft-office-365-skydrive-crm-online-outages.aspx
August 17, 2011 - "... UPDATE: Microsoft said as of late Wednesday afternoon, all systems are back up. The company is still investigating the root cause of the network failure."

- http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-office-365-currently-experiencing-an-outage
17 August 2011

:sad: :fear:

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

Hotmail, Skydrive and Office365 knocked offline...
- http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2108080/microsoft-s-hotmail-windows-live-knocked-offline
Sep 09 2011

- http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2011/09/08/current-hotmail-and-skydrive-issues.aspx#comments
Sep. 08, 2011 - UPDATE 9:45 PM PT, UPDATE 11:02 PM PT, UPDATE 11:49 PM PT...

:sad: :fear:

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

AWS C&C malware...
- https://blogs.technet.com/b/mmpc/archive/2011/09/13/bamm-bamm-rubble.aspx
13 Sep 2011 - "The family selected for addition to MSRT this month is Win32/Bamital*. Win32/Bamital was first discovered in September 2009 and was able to intercept and modify queries performed by search engines such as AltaVista, Bing, Google and Yahoo... authors of Win32/Bamital are employing the use of Amazon Web Services as part of their command and control infrastructure. We notified Amazon of the abuse and received confirmation that it is being investigated."
* http://www.microsoft.com/security/portal/Threat/Encyclopedia/Entry.aspx?Name=Win32/Bamital
___

- http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/blog/2011/9/14/the-dont-trust-model-of-cloud-computing/406.aspx
14/09/2011

:mad: